All at once the whole atmosphere in the restaurant changed, becoming dead silent and extremely tense. Every eye was focused on the tall figure who stood waiting to be seated. After being pointedly ignored for a full three minutes he asked, "Excuse me?"

Forced to acknowledge him, Edna fixed him with a cold level stare. "I don't think this is the restaurant for you. It might be in your best interest if you just got on down the road."

"But I have currency. Many dollars. Or if it is preferred, Element 79-”

“You see that sign there? 'THE MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE'. Now beat it!"

The stranger's expression grew more and more horrified as his highly attuned senses repeatedly bumped up against an impenetrable wall of ill will. He didn't even get as far as reading Jenny Lee’s energies before he had to turn and flee from the diner in tears...

The lotus shaped bell above the door jing-a-linged as Jenny Lee entered the diner.

As soon as the restaurant's owner spotted the girl her face lit up, and she announced to her fifteen customers that here was the little hero who had rescued her beloved Scottish terrier Topsy, who on hearing her name spoken poked her shaggy head up from the tartaned basket she slept in by the front door, then went back to her nap, not terribly interested in the rest of the story: "You shoulda seen her! Shimmying clear down that narrow shaft and back up with my pup just as quick as a monkey!"

Jenny Lee blushed and nodded, knowing that to protest that her feat was nothing special would just spur Edna on.

The Regal Diner was the newest building in Bowerton Springs. And while Jenny Lee did have a love for the traditional styles of her region, she liked this too in a different way. It was all so clean and modern looking, so cosmopolitan (which was a word she’d looked up after seeing it on the side of the brand new Lincoln that Mayor Arlen drove…); with all these shiny chrome accents, the snazzy checkerboard Formica, the bright yellow vinyl booths awash in equanimous florescent light. To her it was like something right out of the motion pictures. Or maybe like being on some kind of spaceship.

Now everyone in town knew that when you came in alone to eat you were supposed to seat yourself at the lunch counter, the booths being reserved for parties of two or more. But Edna made a big show of ushering her to her own booth, like she was some big shot.

They passed the booth occupied by Lyle and Kyle Stuckey, who had inherited TOWED HAUL WRECKING & SALVAGE from Lyle Senior after he was taken away by the FBI for his wartime "gasoline pills" swindle. They stared sullenly at Jenny Lee and Edna as they went past.

While she tried to see the good in everyone, with the Stuckey Brothers it was pretty hard to find. There was a contemptuousness about them, a loathing for everybody and everything that seemed to pour out from their sunken beedy little eyes.

So she was glad when Edna put her silverware on the side where she would sit facing the window, where she wouldn't have to look at them when they did stuff like making fun of Spastic Augie, who wasn't right in the head. According to Dr. Braunhemmer Augie had caught syllabus back in World War One and now he had parakeets in his brain.

She was surprised she hadn't seen Augie yet this morning, calling out "Left! Right! Left! Right!" and "To the rear- HARCH!" as he did his close-order drills down the middle of Main Street in his filthy union suit. Sheriff Sweeny must have came by already and taken him home, putting him on "sentry duty" there, where he would usually stay put for a while.

If Lyle and Kyle were cruel to Augie, they were rude and insulting to everyone else. But the worst thing of all was the way they treated their old coonhound Sam. How bony and thin Sam was while they were both so ungodly fat, and the pitiful way he cringed whenever Jenny Lee went to pet him, and what that was a sign of.

But she remembered how her Papa had said that every person on Earth was a child of God, only some needed help remembering this. And that sure, some were so far gone they would never find their way back to humanity, but it wasn't up to you to decide if such was the case for them or not. She turned and waved, "Good morning!"

Lyle glared at her like this was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard. "What's so damn good about it?"

"You know, people say good morning even on the awfullest day of winter. They're not saying that it IS a good morning. They're saying they wish you will have a good morning. Or that's what I'm saying anyway. That I hope your day goes good." she smiled.

Lyle smirked and rotated his finger in the air sarcastically, but to Kyle this was a major revelation. That people who said "good morning" weren't rubbing their good fortunes in your face the way his sibling always said, but were trying to be nice. He started to say it back to her, but then saw the warning frown on his brother's face and lowered his arm.

Lyle tore his piece of toast in half, "Smart aleck! Thinks she knows everything and has to shoot her mouth off; correcting us in public like we're stupid or sumpin!”

Was that what the kid had been doing? wondered Kyle. He knew he wasn't so good at picking up on these sorts of things, so he was glad he had a brother like Lyle who really knew the score about stuff like this. He muttered in agreement, “Lousy brat!”

"I remembered you like your ketchup," smiled Edna as brought a bottle of Heinz out to Jenny Lee. She whipped out her order pad. "So what's our guest of honor having today?"

And in a short while she brought it out on a big heavy ceramic plate, with a large side of yellow grits and two big biscuits and honey. "Voila! Another Chef Tony masterpiece. What time do you have to be to school, Honey? Does it still start at eight?"

Jenny Lee nodded.

"Then you have lots of time. Enjoy."

A face smiled up at her from the omelet, fashioned from tomato slices, chunks of bell pepper and bits of onion:
.

Jenny Lee smiled when she realized it was supposed to be Tony's pet raccoon Ursula, who she loved to play with when she visited them. Tony had found the tiny starving cub and had coaxed her back to health---feeding her warm milk through the pinky finger of a rubber kitchen glove---before the Italian immigrant even knew what a raccoon was. He had been calling her his "dog-bear".

Now a year old, Ursula slept right on the foot of the bed, and followed her two-legged Daddy everywhere he went. She wore a bright calico neckerchief, and the locals all knew not to shoot Ursula.

He waved shyly from behind the kitchen window as she sang out, "Thank you, Tony!"

The big glass of milk was rich and cold and fresh, the grits light and perfect. Jenny Lee started at the edges of the omelet, saving the face part as long as she could. She was lost to the world as she enjoyed her breakfast, and didn't look up when the bell over the door chimed. But all of a sudden the atmosphere in the diner changed sharply, a tension filling the air.

The focus of all this tension stood next to the PLEASE WAIT TO BE SEATED sign, waiting patiently. Where she usually would have been quick to hollar out "Ignore that old sign. Come on, have a seat up here!", Edna pretended not to notice the person. And while threading a new roll of receipt paper through all the rollers and plates inside the cash register was an intricate task, it wasn't that intricate...

Jenny Lee figured this person was a boy---she had never heard of a woman being over seven feet tall---although seen from the back like this you couldn't really tell. Big clunky work boots, shapely bare calves in black nylons, a polka-dot pleated skirt, a man's heavy blue denim work shirt over a slender frame, and a cute little cocktail hat with a pheasant feather sweeping back from it perched jauntily atop a head that rose up unusually high, and was completely bald.

When Edna moved from fixing the register to rearranging the coffee stirrers in their basketlike little holders, the newcomer called out, "Excuse me? May I be seated?"

It was a man's voice, sort of. And Jenny Lee knew that this hodgepodge of male and female clothes he wore would not endear him to the people here. Personal experience had shown her just how horribly riled up they could get over things like this.

Someone suggested loudly that the circus must be back in town and had lost one of their freaks.

"Excuse me, hello?" he called out again in his soft lilting voice.

When Edna finally decided to acknowledge him it was not with her customary cheerfulness but a cold, level stare. "I'm afraid not. I think you'd better leave."

The stranger spoke in an odd, clipped fashion. "I have been told that I am not very good at determining when people are 'kidding'. Is this exchange a sarcastic acquaintanceship ritual?"

Edna shook her head. “No, that’s not what it is. I don't think this is the restaurant for you. Or the right town either. It might be in your best interest for you to just get on down the road."

"But I'm hungry, and I see many available seats. And I do have sufficient funds."

"Ooooh, sufficient funds!" mimicked Jimmy Barnes, the rural district's mail carrier.

“Then I suggest the Wagon Wheel out on the Ridge Highway. They might serve you."

“But look,” said the stranger, and from his purse took out a dully gleaming disk the size of a sugar cookie, “In addition to currency I also have Element 79. The fellow at the historical artifacts store liked this form of tender especially. I don't understand..."

“You see that sign?” asked Edna, pointing up at a black on white placard that read THE MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO REFUSE SERVICE TO ANYONE. “I can’t make it any plainer than that. So just beat it!"

The stranger looked around the dining room, searching for a friendly face. His expression grew more and more horrified as his highly tuned senses repeatedly bumped up against an impenetrable wall of ill will. None of the scenarios he'd acted out during his Harmony Corps training or his three previous missions where he'd acted as old Zeta Zeta's Deputy Assessor had prepared him for the raw negative emotion of an encounter like this! He never even got to reading Jenny Lee’s energies before he fled the diner in tears...

"My God, what was that on his face?" asked Eve Stroppard, the town switchboard operator.

Edna grinned, "At the Rexall Drug in Farleyville they call that lipstick."

“More like 'its' face,” chortled Lyle Stuckey, momentarily forgetting his policy of disdaining to join in on the conversations that took place in here. He leaned back beaming, fairly amazed himself at the brilliance of his quip.

Eve made a circling motion around the area of her nose. "No, I saw the lipstick. I meant that ........ almost like he had two noses. Anyone notice that?"

“That other thing was a mole,” said Jimmy Barnes.

“With nostrils in it?” asked Eve.

Which started a debate about the stranger's face, most rejecting the extra nose hypothesis. An old codger named Somerset Frisby said that he clearly saw three noses, but Frisby was famous throughout the county for always having to top someone else's claims, and for rattling off stories about his life (“Old Battle-of-Midway Frisby, they called me...”) that would put the Baron von Munchhausen to shame.

"Him a-go like dis!" laughed Dago Tony, who had come out from the kitchen to join in on the fun. He began dancing around the room spanking his own bottom and flapping his other arm around like some crazy gay monkey, which got everyone howling, despite the fact that the stranger had in fact done nothing of the sort.

Edna was laughing at her cook's capering when she noticed Jenny Lee standing beside her, staring up at her with her fists balled tightly.

"What is it Dear? You know you don't have to ask me every time you need to use the restroom."

If there was one thing Jenny Lee couldn't stand it was people being cruel. Tears of outrage welled in her eyes as she scolded room full the adults, "You should all be ashamed of yourselves! And you especially, Edna. I might’ve expected Jimmy here or the Stuckeys to act this way, but you know better! I know you do!"

Dago Tony had started to slink off toward the kitchen-

"And you too, Tony! You read me some of your poems. The English was a little weird, but they showed me you have a good heart. Like that one that goes 'Can you tell me what is the sound/ Of when the doves they cry?' Well they're crying now, amico mio. Can you hear them?"

She stomped off toward the door. "Shame on you both! Shame on ALL of you!"

And then she was gone, the bell jangling frantically as she went flying out of the diner.

The girl's right, thought Edna glumly. It wasn't like she had never met a fairy before...

She thought of her friend Jeremy, who she’d met when she was trying to launch her singing career in Nashville nearly twenty years ago. Despite his determination to seem scandalous---all those crazy stories about orgies and séances and opium dens---he’d been a sweet and caring friend, always there for her with emotional support and numerous small loans; until Edna finally realized that her dream of stardom at the Grand Ole Opry just wasn't meant to be and caught the bus back home. And while it was true that Jeremy had tended to dress more like some dapper Kentucky squire on Derby Day (or occasionally a proper Southern belle) than the bizarre character she had just met, still Edna knew she should have been a lot nicer to that ......... whatever he was.

She cleared Jenny Lee's table in silence, feeling about two inches tall. As she passed by the Stuckey brothers Lyle caught a glimpse of the untouched slice of blueberry pie and suggested cheerfully, "Well if she ain't gonna eat that, I'll take it."

She clunked it down in front of him with a look that said ‘Choke on it!’ but this didn't phase Lyle. People were always getting themselves worked up about something he said or did, and free pie was free pie.

Clancy Smyth called back into the kitchen, "What's this about you writing poetry, Tony?"

"I'm-a don't know," droned Tony in his best puzzled-by-everything voice, before turning his back and busying himself with a sink full of dishes.

Like Edna, Tony was feeling awfully remorseful. He remembered how people had treated him when he first came to Bowerton Springs---the suspicion, all the none-too-friendly teasing---before he had managed to endear them all to him with his cheerful ingratiating Guinea peasant ways...

It had felt so good to finally be accepted that he’d gotten carried away, joining in their ridicule of the stranger in an attempt to further cement his bond with them all. But mocking that strange person had been plain wrong.

The poor creature was not at fault for his behavior, and clearly should have been under psychiatric care. Some manic disorder coupled with massive oedipal confusion was Tony's guess; but perhaps what had given him that final push into madness had been the lifetime's worth of of mockery he must have received for the deformities that marred his face...

And although she had shamed him, Tony was actually thankful to his Little Angel, for being friend enough to tell him when he was doing wrong. To remind him of all the things he'd sworn to himself as a youth, after he'd read a translation of Shelly's To A Skylark and declared himself to be a proponent of truth and beauty, freedom and love.

He just wished that his young friend hadn't outed him as a poet. He didn't want it widely known that (in Italian, French, German, Latin and ancient Greek, at least) he may have been the best educated man this side of the Smokey Mountains.

"Mama Mia!" sighed Tony.

Jenny Lee stood in the diner's parking lot looking up and down Main Street, and almost swore. While she'd been inside giving those grownups a piece of her mind, the stranger had disappeared. She tried to imagine which way the strange man might have run, but finally had to admit that she didn't have a clue. As she turned to go back inside and collect the schoolbooks she'd left inside she noticed something gleaming brightly against the white gravel of the parking lot.

It was a small splotch of liquid. A brilliant, artificial-looking blue, like the fenders on Mayor Arlen's big blue and yellow Cosmopolitan convertible. Whatever it was, it seemed to be glowing. She squatted down and cupped her hand over it, and sure enough- it lit up the dark space beneath her palm bright blue. When she touched her finger to it an intense wave of sadness swept through her, like some emotional fever chill. She wouldn't be doing that again!

Somerset Frisby gazed off in the direction the Stranger had ran, and shook his head, “I never seen anyone crying blue before.”

"You're always cryin' the blues, you whining old buzzard!" snorted Clancy O’Donnel.

"I'm talking about that crazy feller. Didja see those tears he was crying?”

“I'd be crying too, I had a mug like that...”

“No, I mean his tears! Bright blue and glowin' like they was radioactive or something. Damnedest thing I ever saw,” said Frisby. Then his whole tone and body language changed, as he hooked his thumbs through the canvas straps of his overalls and announced, “Y'know, it reminds me of somethin' similar I witnessed after the atomic tests at Bikini, where I was brought in as a consultant on nuke-ular physics by General Stevens-”

"Crying is crying," murmured Edna glumly, more to herself than anyone...

Jenny Lee stood up and looked around. Sure enough there was another spot of the shiny blue liquid, about ten feet away. And peering off in that same direction she saw there was a whole series of them---a proverbial trail of breadcrumbs, gleaming like phosphor in the morning sun---that lead up the dirt lane of Myrtle Street, away from downtown. Knowing that they had something to do with the stranger, she followed them...

.

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TO A SKYLARK by Percy B. Shelley:
http://bartleby.com/101/608.html

HOCUS POCUS AND FRISBY by Rod Serling:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9hTg8RzzeM